Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg!
And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true?
I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth"
> Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student and his adoptive father was an impoverished Cuban refugee who arrived in the U.S. alone at age 16. However, his maternal grandfather owned a large Texas ranch and later provided roughly $250,000 to help fund the launch of Amazon
Oh so his parents weren't wealthy only his grandparents. That's totally different
You know what my Grandpa gave me? A used car worth about 3 grand. Still amazing, I'm still very grateful to him! But the comparison here is absolutely not in the same league!
And I'm still a fortunate one, because many people get much less than a car from their families
The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all.
Everyone's life is a mix of skill and luck, so to discredit skill, you would need to quantify the luck. An easy example is a lottery winner, a hard example is a Bezos. Any investor with the foresight to see what Bezos could do with grans money, would jump past her in line and give him triple.